McDonald’s Frork Promotion Shows Gamble of Humor in Marketing

McDonald’s (NYSE:MCD) has already admitted that its latest innovation is essentially useless. But the company still hopes that it serves an important purpose for its marketing efforts.

The product is called a “frork.” It’s essentially a fork, but with french fries instead of prongs. The purpose? According to an infomercial type video from McDonald’s, you can use it to pick up and eat all the toppings and condiments that fall out of McDonald’s new signature crafted sandwiches.

The video features Anthony Sullivan, “preposterous product pitching powerhouse” delivering a passionate presentation for the new product. But while McDonald’s did actually create a limited number of frorks for this promotion, the whole thing is clearly aimed more at getting attention than promoting the actual product.

Humor is the key for McDonald’s in this case. They’ve created a concept and a video that are fairly ridiculous and aimed at getting customers to laugh while also building just enough intrigue to actually get them to try the new signature sandwiches.

Humor in Marketing

But humor can be a tricky thing for businesses. If people don’t “get” the infomercial or if it just doesn’t strike the right chord with customers, then all of those marketing (and in this case actual product creation) resources will have gone to waste.

That doesn’t mean that businesses shouldn’t use humor in marketing. But it’s not always as easy as it looks. And it requires a really strong understanding of your audience if you want to be successful.